Fujifilm amplifies the capacity of its biopharmaceutical CDMO sites

FUJIFILM Corporation is to invest a total of 3.2 billion yen (approximately EUR 24 million) on its CDMO sites in the USA and the UK in order to accelerate the expansion of the company’s business for developing and manufacturing biopharmaceuticals under contract for other parties.

In addition to investing approximately 2.2 billion yen in a GMP facility dedicated to the production of monoclonal antibodies at the FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies (FDB) site in College Station, Texas, USA, the company is also investing approximately 1.0 billion yen at its Wilton Centre site in Redcar, UK, to expand the floor area of the development site of production processes for antibodies and install an additional facility.

The new investment will expand the existing Saturn mAb™ Process Development Laboratories dedicated to the development of monoclonal antibodies under FDB’s Platform. This platform provides highly efficient production workflow of monoclonal antibodies through FDB’s proprietary technology base. It realizes the production of high-quality antibodies efficiently by designing the workflow on the whole from the process development such as cultivation conditions, the application of the process to the investigational drug / medicine production, as well as up to the commercial production.

From Fall 2018 onwards, the new facilities will ramp up operation, bolstering the company’s ability to accept orders from its customers for process development and manufacturing in the field of antibodies.

In March 2017, Fujifilm established the company’s Bio CDMO Division which oversees the expansion of its contract development and manufacturing business focused on FDB. Currently, FDB is concentrating on providing solutions to deliver biotherapeutics and advanced therapies to its customers. The company is working to strengthen its business capacity through measures including the installation of three single-use 2,000-litre mammalian cell culture tanks, scheduled to begin operation early 2018 in the cGMP-compliant production facility that has recently been completed at Texas site as well as the company’s new UK facility that opened in September.

Fujifilm will continue to further expand its biopharmaceutical production capabilities, and it will further develop high efficiency and high productivity technology by combining group technologies, to continue to grow further the business.

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